Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 1237

It was one thing to call men to the colors ; ;

it was another to house, feed, and train them.

The existing Army posts were wholly inadequate.

In a matter of months the War Department built thirty-two camps, each one accommodating fifty thousand men -- sixteen were under canvas in the South and sixteen with frame structures in the North.

It was a gargantuan task ; ;

a typical cantonment in the North had twelve hundred buildings, an electric-sewer-water system, and twenty-five miles of roads.

At Camp Taylor in Kentucky a barracks was built in an hour and a half from timber that had been standing in Mississippi forests one week before.

The total operation was a construction project comparable in magnitude with the Panama Canal, but in 1917 time was in short supply ; ;

in three months the Army spent three-quarters as much as had been expended on the `` big Ditch '' in ten years.